OW33: Orbit first, permit later

So, here’s what’s going on, satellites basically figured out that if they fly fast enough, country borders turn into mere suggestions. The laws still say every country gets to control what beams through its airspace. But the actual satellites? Yeah, they’re not exactly pulling over for customs. The paperwork says “stop,” but the dishes on the ground are all “wait, paperwork?”

And that right there, that’s the real story. That little mismatch? That’s where the whole mess lives.

So, Iran kicks this off by saying, “Hey, these Starlink kits showed up uninvited.” They complain to the UN’s telecom people, and those guys get all riled up, in their polite Geneva way. Their version of yelling? “Please stop the illegal ones.” Yeah, that’s the whole threat. Basically, if a terminal pops up where it’s not supposed to, someone should just shut it off. Not write a 400-page report and submit it to a subcommittee.

Now the big ITU meeting, the telecom Olympics for regulators, adds this snoozer of an agenda item that quietly turns into a monster: every satellite terminal has to be controllable in real-time. Geofenced. Pinpoint accurate. Shut off like a light switch. Oh, and you can’t name SpaceX in a treaty, so now everyone has to follow this.

Guess who that helps? The big guys. Starlink? Already built the control rooms. They’re not sweating it. Amazon’s Kuiper isn’t even live yet, but they’ve got government deals lined up and a cloud army on standby. When regulators say “build a kill switch,” these guys go, “Cool, want fries with that?”

The rest? Not so lucky. Because if you can’t afford your own satellite command center and a legal team, you’re basically toast.

Then it gets wild on the ground. Namibia’s snatching up Starlink kits like they’re pirated DVDs. South Africa’s raiding sellers. Cuba’s smuggling them in disguised as TVs. Sudan? That one hits hard, people trying to get online while the government’s in full blackout mode. But every single country calls it the same thing: public safety and sovereignty. That folder must be thicker than a steakhouse menu by now.

And here’s the best part, the local telecoms. They’re not mad, they’re just “concerned.” You know, for fairness. Totally altruistic. If satellites are selling internet in their backyard, they want those guys buried in the same red tape they’ve been buried in for years.

Their list of demands? Intercepts, local data storage, emergency services, taxes, oh, and don’t forget a nice donation to the universal service fund. Because nothing says “fair competition” like dragging your rival down into the regulatory swamp you’re already drowning in.

But waaait, these same telcos are also quietly doing deals with the satellite guys. Backhaul in rural areas, direct-to-device trials, they’re all smiles and handshakes. As long as the satellites stay in their lane, behind the scenes, under the telco’s brand. Not out here offering competition. Oh no. Can’t have customers realizing they’ve got options.

Meanwhile, Starlink just keeps rolling. They’ve got the gear, the engineers, the budget. Amazon? They’ll just spin up another cloud region and call it compliance. OneWeb plays nice with the rulebook, sells through local ISPs, gets all the licenses, and still gets to pay the price. New players? Unless they walk in with geofencing, real-time shutoff, and God-tier compliance baked in, they don’t even make it past the welcome mat.

Just “comply or die.”

And over everyone’s shoulder? Telco lobbyists whispering “level playing field” like it’s some kind of bedtime story.

Now we’ve got a copy-paste playbook. Country complains. ITU sends a note. Satellite operator gets a finger wag. Telcos send letters screaming “national security” and “abandoned 5G investment.” Everyone nods. Suddenly, what was voluntary becomes mandatory. Standard practice. No wiggle room. No startup-friendly policy. Just “comply or die.”

And yeah, there is a smarter way. We could have emergency access rules that don’t rely on billionaire charity. We could build humanitarian carve-outs that aren’t based on who’s friends with the minister’s cousin. But that would take transparency, audits, and sane expectations, not Everest-level infrastructure just to serve a rural school.

Because here’s what it really looks like: if you break enough rules and build fast enough, you don’t get shut down, you get to redefine what’s legal. The ITU won’t name SpaceX, so it raises the bar until only SpaceX can jump over it. Telcos cheer, because their wishlist just became the global standard.

And all of this? Wrapped up in a shiny bow labeled “compliance.” But really? It’s just consolidation, now with rockets.

Orbitalwhispers.com

…so I parked it all in one place. Orbital Whispers is live. LinkedIn plays slot machine with your attention, great for memes, useless for work. I wanted a home where the algorithm doesn’t decide if you get the story. Now it’s central, clean, and actually shows up.

The newsletter lands every time if you register, free. No “maybe you’ll get it if the first hour performs.” It arrives, you read, you move on with your day.

What I’m building is simple. Receipts first. If a company chants momentum, I open the registry. When IRIS² announces another committee, I follow the budget line, not the logo conga. D2D claims get the band plan and handset limits litmus, then we see if it flies or just makes noise.

Updates go up fast. On analysis days, I connect filings to boardroom flinches. Orbital Weekly carries the main piece and the bite-size bits worth your coffee. Orbital OSINT grinds through tenders, launch manifests, spectrum shuffles, the stuff that changes roadmaps while press releases preen. Need to brief a boss without guessing, the Operational Notes strip it to sources and decisions, sarcasm off, facts on.

Commercially, no mystery. Free registration guarantees delivery and archive access for the open pieces. If the job needs sources, timelines, and the practical so what, step into Operational Access. Teams get seats and short briefings that save everyone a meeting.

Then tehre’s The Interrogation Room. It’s a simple setup. Ten questions, one seat, no handlers. You get the list, you answer on record, we publish the conversation and a score for clarity and operational reality. Bring numbers. Leave the adjectives. Declined seats land on the Cricket List.

I’m done humoring polite fiction. A satellite “in service” without ground certs is a showroom car with no engine. A six-month MoU isn’t strategy, it’s stationery. Sovereignty talk that outsources the sensitive bit is costume, not policy.

If you want signal instead of confetti, move your reading over. The funny part is how often the filings whisper one thing while the parade keeps marching.

The Grapevine

Amazon Kuiper hits 100+ satellites

Amazon just blew past 100 satellites for Kuiper, and they’re doing it so fast you’d think Jeff lit a fire under the entire LEO belt. They’ve been quietly chucking these things up like they’re slinging Prime boxes into orbit. No service yet, of course. But hey, why not brag about a hardware pile? It’s like building 100 gas stations with no roads.

And they’re doing it all with SpaceX, the same company they’re supposedly competing with. How does that even work, someone please explain! Amazon’s throwing cash at Elon to beat Elon. That’s the industry now: billionaires playing Risk with actual satellites.

Meanwhile, half the world still can’t get Wi-Fi in a hospital. But sure, let’s put more broadband in the upper atmosphere.

Spire Global’s debt-free pivot to RF detection

Spire got rid of their debt, which is great, because now they can focus on more profitable ventures. Like RF detection. Thats listening to ships pinging each other from the middle of nowhere and selling that signal data to anyone who wants to know where a fishing boat might be hiding.

It’s not sexy, but it pays better than trying to be a space platform unicorn. So now Spire’s not pretending to be AWS-in-orbit. They’re basically glorified spies with cubesats. Honestly, it’s probably the most rational pivot I’ve seen in a while.

Not that you’d hear that from their comms team, who keep tossing around “multi-domain fusion” like it’s not just a nice way to say “we know where your yacht is.”

ULA’s trimmed launch schedule

ULA just told the world they’re only doing nine launches next year. Nine. For a company that spent the past decade promising they’d crank out rockets like sausages. They’ve got this new Vulcan rocket, which was supposed to be the big comeback tour, but now it’s more like a sad bar gig with three songs and a broken amp.

And you know who’s sitting there holding the bag? Amazon again. Kuiper bought a ton of rides on Vulcan, but ULA’s basically saying, “Yeah, we’ll get to you eventually, 2026 maybe?” It’s like ordering an Uber and the driver just texts, “In traffic. Maybe next year.”

Muon Space and the MuSat XL

Muon’s trying to make some noise with this new satellite platform: MuSat XL. Sounds like the muesli bars I baked this week. Supposed to be faster, bigger, better, AI-enabled, whatever that means today. They’ve got their first customer already, which is nice. But the pitch is basically: “We’ll give you a satellite bus with more legroom and better in-flight service.” It’s not groundbreaking, it’s a feature upgrade.

Still, in this market, just shipping anything on time is a flex. Most of these guys can’t even get out of prototype phase without NASA spotting them lunch money. Muon says they’ll deliver in under a year. Cool.

Let’s see if the rocket waits for them.

Schriever Wargame 2025

Meanwhile, the Space Force just wrapped this big classified wargame. Schriever. They run these simulations to figure out how we’d fight if satellites start dying mid-conflict, which they will, by the way.

So they spend a week pretending to lose GPS, dodge Chinese ASATs, and figure out how to keep Zoom running during World War III. And every year it ends the same: “We really should build more resilient systems.” No! Really?. These guys run drills like we haven’t been told for fifteen years that commercial satcom is a soft underbelly. But don’t worry, there’s a PowerPoint deck now.

Cambrian Works & Astroscale – Swift servicing mission

This one’s rich. Cambrian Works, never heard of them until last week, teams up with Astroscale to pitch NASA a satellite servicing mission called Swift. Which is funny, because nothing in this industry moves fast, and servicing missions are the biggest slow burn of them all.

They want to refuel, reposition, maybe even repair satellites. Cool idea. Been around since the ‘90s. But now they’ve rebranded it with “commercial servicing architecture,” which is code for “still waiting for funding.” It’s like pitching AAA roadside assistance for satellites, except you still need to invent the tow truck.